Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth CenturyAdams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
History
Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century
Adams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
Women travelers -- Biography
We must resume our narrative of Madame de Hell's journey. On their way
to Stavropol, they experienced a mountain-storm, one of the grandest and
most terrible they had ever witnessed. The roar of the thunder,
repeated by every echo in cavern and ravine, mingled with the groaning
and jarring of the great trees, with the loud gusts of the furious wind,
with all those mysterious voices of the tempest which come we know not
whence, but deeply stir the heart, and have so potent a harmony and such
a sublimity and force of sound that the least superstitious mind
involuntarily awaits some supernatural manifestation, some message from
the other world. We have ourselves listened to a storm in a Highland
glen--the wind sweeping down the rugged declivities with terrible
impetuosity, and the thunder-peals reverberating from peak to peak,
while the clouds
"From many a horrid rift abortive poured
Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water with fire,"
until the sense of an eerie and mysterious Presence has forced itself
upon our mind, and we have been able to understand the emotions in which
originated the visions of wraith and phantom of the bards of old. Our
travellers, however, passed through the gale unhurt. A tremendous
outburst of rain, the final effort of the tempest, cleared the sky,
which towards the west was gradually lighted up with gleams of purple
light, contrasting gloriously with the darkness of the rest of the
firmament. A gorgeous rainbow, one foot of which rested on the highest
peak of the Caucasus, while the other was enveloped in the mists of
evening, rose before them for a few moments, like an image of hope, and
then slowly faded into thin air. At length they reached the station,
but in an unpleasant condition--wet, weary, dazed, and not a little
surprised to find themselves safe and sound after the adventures of the
day.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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